


a vehement champion

by I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: (also let her say fuck smeyer!!!), Book: Breaking Dawn, Canon Compliant, Leah Clearwater Deserved Better, Missing Scene, also WE deserved to see this scene in canon, plus WOW was this cathartic, so did Jacob Black, unfortunately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28679091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames/pseuds/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames
Summary: "Who would have believed it? Leah walking into the bloodsuckers' place human to complain about how I was being treated." —Jacob Black, Breaking Dawn [Leah's perspective of her rightful critique of Bella Swan]
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	a vehement champion

**Author's Note:**

> "Wait—Leah was yelling at Bella about me?"  
> He nodded one sharp nod. "You were quite vehemently championed."

The roar and the rumble. Hot metal. Slick gas. Leah nudges aside a fern—and there, skidding down the asphalt, is another one of those stupid fancy cars. She doesn't think she's seen it yet, but then again, there hasn't been much driving happening during this whole horrible crisis.

It's moving fast, leaving rubber skids on the asphalt, but the wolf's eyes—her eyes—are meant to track far faster prey, and she can make out Jacob through the tinted glass.

Jacob, but—twisted. His face crumpled like he's holding back tears, his hands shaking on the wheels and the gearshift and as he rakes one absently through his hair, every motion jerky—and his _eyes_. They're bright, but not in the sunshiney, dopey way they always were before this whole mess started. Bright like a fever. Like he's burning up.

And then the car is gone, leaving nothing but a whiff of hot gas and burnt rubber—and Leah.

Leah, alone. In these stupid, leech-scented woods and in her own mind. For once. Again.

Leah, alone, as all her second chances, the future she desperately wants speeds away down a long road to who-knows-where. As Jacob speeds away—that stupid, stupid boy—

Who's been, impossibly, kinder than she thought anyone outside her family ever would be. Gruff and grouchy and determined to shoulder through things alone, sure, but also funny and surprisingly competent, and just...easy to be around. To share a head with.

 _This is a terrible idea,_ Leah thinks, and wheels towards the leeches' house.

* * *

She's thinking _where did Jacob go, why is Jacob so upset, what happened, hey bloodsuckers I'm talking to you_ as loudly as she can as she pads up the driveway. Hopefully the ginger will hear her and she can handle this without having to get too close to the house. Without having to hear that one human heartbeat, painfully frail and faltering—

There's a rustle, the sickening sting of their scent wafting even stronger, and then the ginger is indeed standing in front of her. The slump in his shoulders is gone, she can't help noticing, his eyes much brighter despite their hackle-raising darkness—and that _definitely_ doesn't bode well for whatever it is Jacob's so upset about.

"Leah." He tips his head, and she resists the urge to snarl.

_What the hell have you done to Jacob now?_

His face is frigidly polite, and she decides that it's okay to snarl at him, actually—it gets a hint of guilt flickering in his eyes, at least.

"We discovered that I can hear the baby's thoughts. That he's _aware_ of us. That he loves Bella." The guilt is gone, replaced entirely by wonder, and, ignoring the faint urge to be sick, Leah wonders if she should growl again.

But wait—if that's—

Oh. _Oh_.

"Indeed." That stupid head-tilt again. "I'm afraid my opinion on the matter has changed somewhat. Jacob...did not take well to being alone in his resentment of the child."

 _No fucking shit!_ Leah thinks it in as much of a roar as she's capable of—she wants to see this asshole _flinch_. To see that facade crack. She's been in Jacob's head too, seen how glad he was for this stupid self-destructive pact between him and the leech—glad that at least, at the very least, the asshole who had killed Bella Swan felt at least a little guilty about it. And sure, she could understand why Bella wanted the child so badly, knew the way Jacob was holding on was unhealthy—but she couldn't exactly blame him.

She knew what that pain felt like.

"I do think, with another chance to speak to him about it—"

And Leah sees red.

Her head is _roaring_ now, furious enough that the leech stumbles back under the weight of it, and if she wasn't so pissed she'd be satisfied—

 _You have thirty seconds to get me some clothes, or I will rip you to pieces and take yours_ , she thinks at him.

"Leah—"

 _Twenty nine_.

The leech is gone, blurringly fast, and Leah forces her clenched jaws open, trying to breathe.

 _Jacob deserves better than this_ , she can't stop thinking. (She deserved better—she deserved someone, just once, to say something to Sam, _anything—_ )

The leech is back, a pile of obnoxiously folded clothes in his hands.

 _Drop them and turn around_ , she thinks at him, baring her teeth a little. He does—and Leah becomes human.

It's an odd feeling, after so long. Her eyes are farther from the ground than they should be, all of her off-balance on only two legs, the air colder than she's felt it for a long time.

Anger feels different like this too. Seething more than burning—and there are words to it now. Words she has to say.

She pulls on the clothes, fingers steadier with every second of use. The stench of bloodsucker clings acidic and sickly to every stitch of them, (cotton sweatpants and a baggy sweater, sleeves just a bit too short for her—they must have been Bella's, and Leah tries not to think about the fact that she's wearing a dying girl's clothes), and she grits her teeth. Straightens her back.

 _It's time to put on your armor_ , Sue used to say, when Leah came home crying, about bullies or rude teachers or even Sam. Whenever she asked for advice, or even just complained. _Put on your armor, and know that nothing they do can touch you._

The leech turns around, and she can read him gearing up to protest. To try to stop her. She raises her chin and stares at him. Dares him to even _try_.

"I want to speak to your wife."

* * *

The ginger leech shadows her anxiously up the stairs and down the hallways. Leah keeps her chin up and her eyes forward and her thoughts on armor—shining pieces of it over every inch of her. Except for her hands. Her claws.

She is untouchable.

The blonde leech is in the door of the room—Leah's human ears are too weak to find a stuttering heartbeat, but it's obvious that this is the room where Bella is. She meets the pitch-black gaze, steady, and quirks an eyebrow at her.

"I need to speak to Bella."

For a second, the leech is statue-still, and Leah thinks she might have to pry her out of the doorway—

"Is that _Leah_?" The voice is hoarse, and terrifyingly weak—for a second, Leah doesn't, can't, recognize it. It has to be Bella, there's no way one of the leeches would sound like that, but...

In all of Jacob's memories, she is so much _more_.

"Rose, let her in, please."

The blonde stares Leah down for a second longer, lips pursed—and then she dips her head in something like a nod, and steps out of the way.

And Leah can see all the way to the dying girl.

For a second, she thinks she might puke. Bella Swan is as unrecognizable as her voice. Just...hollow. Her cheeks and her eyes—circles under them so dark they _must_ be bruises—her spindly fingers, legs that look like they wouldn't even bear her weight—

And a horribly swollen stomach.

She's seen Bella in Jacob's head, in flashes, but—not like this. Through his eyes, it's all blurred by the how-she-used-to-bes, the way she laughed and spoke and hugged and shone. The way he loved her. This is just death, plain and simple—and all of Jacob's pain fits itself into an entirely new context.

For a second, Leah is sickeningly grateful that at the very least, she didn't have to deal with Sam dying. That she could hate him freely. Because how can Jake possibly let go, seeing this? How can he possibly grieve her leaving him when he's stuck just grieving _her_?

The girl tries to smile, but she's also trying to sit up and face Leah better, so it's more of a grimace—shit, Leah can see her arms trembling with the effort, and she hasn't moved an inch—

"Don't bother," she manages, and strides over. There's a chair right in front of Bella—was the leech just sitting there feeling her stomach? Why would they even bother sitting? She drags it to a comfortable distance before she settles into it, spine as straight as she can make it, and locks eyes with the girl breaking Jacob's heart. "I won't be long."

"Of course," Bella says, forcing brightness, and Leah's stomach turns. "What—"

"Do you know what you're doing to Jacob?" Leah spits, and watches it hit, a punch to the gut. Eyes go slack and then crumple—and it feels viciously good. Like a little bit of the darkness she's been curled up with in Jacob's head has somewhere else to go for once. "I want to assume that you don't, because it's already monstrous, but if you know and you're stringing him on anyways, that's even worse."

One of the leeches snarls behind her, and she ignores it. She is armored and untouchable—and she doesn't give a _damn_ if they think her cruel. She is cruel. She has to be, because everyone else in this room is, but Jacob refuses, and it's killing him.

"He loves you. And I get that you have no control over that, or whether you love him back. It's your right to choose a—vampire over him, and it's your right to choose this child over him, and that's _fine_." Tears are starting to shine in Bella's eyes. _Good, maybe it'll get through to her, maybe it'll change things—_

"But what's not _fine_ is you asking him to stick around and watch you die."

Indignation sparks behind Bella's tears, and Leah jabs a finger at her.

"No! I don't care if he says he wants to be here. Of course he'll say that. And he means it! Jacob Black has the biggest goddamn heart, and he had no control over letting you into it, and now he will be here until the very end, because you've told him you feel better when he's around and he will do _anything_ to help the people he loves. That doesn't mean it's _right_."

The leeches are shifting behind her again, and she glares harder at Bella.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me that you think it's fair that he has to watch you go through _this_. This is a horror show. _You_ are. And it _is_ killing him to watch it."

"I—" But the other girl's voice cracks, and her protests shatter with it.

"You saw him earlier, right?" Leah presses. "When he ran out of here? I did—I saw him tearing down the road looking like he'd been stabbed. Like he was looking for a cliff to drive off. Did you know that he has nightmares every night? That sometimes he feels like he can't _move_ because he's in so much pain seeing you like this."

Bella is sobbing openly now. Every breath rattles, and she flinches at every rasping inhale, and _Jake has to see her like that every day—_

"He's turning into a wolf, after this. Permanently. And he's running away. Because he's in so much pain that he can't imagine ever feeling something like this again."

Leah's veins are alive with anger. _Electric_ with it.

"But you won't let him start getting over it. You won't even let him leave now, before he has to watch it get even worse. Somehow. No, you're going to drag this out so that he has to watch you die. He's going to have to _see your corpse_. How long do you think it'll take him to get over that? I think maybe he'll never get over it." She clenches her fists. "You've already broken his heart, and your stupid family of leeches already ruined any chance of any of us having a normal life for _years_. For some of us it's forever. Do you really need to traumatize him like this too?"

Another sob rattles out of Bella--she curls over that awful, bulging stomach, and it muffles the keening, but not enough—

A frigid hand bites into Leah's shoulder, and she whips to her feet, snarling.

It's the ginger, his face monstrous with rage. 

"Don't _fucking_ touch me," she spits— _i will shift right here and tear your head off, how hard do you think she'll cry then_ she thinks at him, as viciously as she can muster.

He pulls his hand back, features still frozen in that inhuman rictus of anger. "I don't have to stand here and watch you torment her for no reason—"

"I'm not here to hurt her." Leah rolls her shoulders straight again, and turns back to Bella. "I'm here because you're the only one with the power to end this, and everyone else is too busy treating you like something fragile to ask. Stop being selfish. Do the right thing by him for once. Tell him to go."

There's no response. There's no chance she'll actually do it—not when Leah can feel both of the bloodsuckers buzzing with the desire to go comfort her, and tell her she's perfect, that it's not her fault. To help her keep pretending her actions don't have consequences.

But Leah said it, and that still matters.

Even if it's only to herself.

She turns again, and strides past the leeches, head held high, armor shining.


End file.
